


Gave My Love to a Shooting Star

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Read My Lips [37]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6518608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Stargate (any), any/any, Gave my love to a shooting star</i>. Jonathan and Evan are pen-pals. Evan POV. Set season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gave My Love to a Shooting Star

Evan wondered if the SGC knew where their precious little Duplicate O’Neill had gotten to. He was honestly surprised they hadn’t scooped him up for Atlantis as soon as the opportunity opened up, because after John Sheppard, Jack O’Neill had one of the strongest expressions of the ATA gene, and a smaller, more physically vulnerable version of him would be handy to have around to either help with Atlantis or as a back-up for operating the Chair on Earth.  
  
Evan doubted the SGC would think to look at a hippie commune outside of San Francisco, especially one that had been there since the Sixties and had people coming and going all the time. What was one more kid trying to find his place in the world?  
  
Only Jonathan McNeil had had a place in the world, and it had been taken from him by one bored, arrogant alien who’d thought superior technology equated superior morality.  
  
Jonathan’s letters came to Evan in a huge bundle, once every couple of months when the Daedalus did a supply run. He wrote every week. His handwriting was old-fashioned cursive, the kind Evan usually saw on chalk menu boards at cute sidewalk cafes in the historical districts of big cities. Jonathan’s postscripts in Mom’s emails were always brief. Evan’s replies were equally brief, because he wasn’t sure what to say to the boy who’d been his commanding officer, a man he’d looked up to, and was now a ghost in his own world.  
  
Jonathan’s letters, though, were long, and melancholy, and poetic. Given what Evan had read in O’Neill’s AARs, he was surprised at how verbose Jonathan could be, but then Jonathan loved opera and Russian novels and was, in many ways, an old-fashioned romantic. He was subtle, kept names and details out of what few stories he shared (his very first time through the Stargate with a sneezing Daniel Jackson at his side, how he’d somehow convinced Teal’c to join the team), but Evan could read between the lines. Jack O’Neill was a man who loved quietly and fiercely, and when love failed him, he severed part of himself and cast it away and stanched up the bleeding with brutal practicality, and he moved on.  
  
There had been rumors all over the base under the Mountain, about how O’Neill was in love with Carter, but frat regs had put a stop to that. There had been even more rumors that O’Neill was in love with Daniel Jackson, but DADT had put a stop to that. Some of the marines had engaged in filthy speculation about just about everyone on SG-1 and Teal’c. Evan had never joined in, because for all that he didn’t always get along with Jackson, didn’t know Carter, was a little afraid of Teal’c (and now he had Ronon in his life), he’d always respected O’Neill. Evan wasn’t going to broach the subject of romance with Jonathan McNeil, but then he opened one of Jonathan’s letters and saw the handwriting was shaky, that the ink was runny in places, and he saw the names _Sara_ and _Charlie_ and the words _son_ and _dead_ and _divorced_ , and he had to reread the letter several times.  
  
Evan didn’t know what to say in response. He suspected there were only a handful of people in the world who knew all of this about Jack O’Neill, and Jonathan McNeil wasn't able to talk to any of them.  
  
Evan went back and reread all of Jonathan’s previous letters, especially the ones where he recounted spending time with Gabby and Mikey, and then he reread the anecdotes about his time on SG-1, and he knew.  
  
He knew who Jack O’Neill had been in love with.  
  
He wondered if Jonathan was in love with that person anymore.

Then Evan read Jonathan’s most recent letter.  
  
_I’m a new person now. I have a new life, and I am going to move on, give it a shot, see about loving someone again. After all, I have an entire lifetime ahead of me to try to get it right. I don’t know that giving my love to someone so far out of reach is any wiser than giving my love to a shooting star, but I’m willing to take the chance._  
  
Something about that last paragraph struck a chord in Evan, and --  
  
He flipped open his laptop, fired it up, opened the most recent email from his mother.  
  
There was a postscript from Jonathan (Mom wrote them as P.S.J. these days).  
  
_Gave my love to a shooting star._  
  
Evan felt something in his chest loosen, unfurl, blossom into something big and bright, and he set about composing a reply to his mother, with the postscript:  
  
_P.S.J. Take a chance. You’ve got great odds._


End file.
